


A Beginner's Guide to Time Travel

by wistfulmemory



Series: NaNoWriMo 2018 [8]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-08
Updated: 2018-11-11
Packaged: 2019-08-20 12:43:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16555994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wistfulmemory/pseuds/wistfulmemory
Summary: Just because it doesn't look like a typical time machine doesn't mean it's not one.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This was inspired by the prompt: "You’re just an average person walking in your neighborhood, when on your neighbor’s lawn, you see a poorly decorated cardboard box with the words “time machine” written on it. As a joke, you enter it and start shaking it, but when you walk out, the houses aren’t there anymore."

I first experienced time travel when I was 12. I was walking home from my friend Aura’s house when I noticed a refrigerator box on Mr. Klossner’s front lawn. Mr. Klossner was really picky about how his yard looked, so I was very surprised to see a random cardboard box on his lawn. When I got closer to it, I noticed that the flaps had been drawn on so they looked like doors, and there was handwritten sign on the side that said, “TIME TRAVEL—EXPERIENCE THE PAST IF YOU DARE!”

I was going through a reading stage where I devoured every book about steampunk and time travel that I could get my hands on, so this note really intrigued me. I walked around the box, examining the decorations and seeing if I could tell if this was a joke. I didn’t see anyone around, so I decided to step inside just for fun.

As soon as I was fully inside the box, I pulled out my cell phone and turned on the flashlight as it was very dark. I saw a red button had been stuck into the cardboard. Under it was a whiteboard with a container of markers on the side. The board had the words “Date” and “Location” written on it. After thinking a moment, I wrote “June 7, 1888” and “London, England.” Then I pressed the button.

The sides of the box started vibrating. I looked around, but I could see nothing happening inside. The vibrations lasted for about a minute before they suddenly stopped. I waited, listening to see if I could tell what had happened before I went looking. There were strange sounds and also the absence of background sounds that I was used to hearing.

I poked my head outside. I was in a place that I didn’t recognize, and I was definitely not in the era where I was supposed to be. I quickly closed the flaps. This was not good. I needed to get back home and fast. I went back to the whiteboard, erased my previous writing, and wrote the current date and location of my home. I crossed my fingers and pressed the red button.


	2. Chapter 2

When the vibrations stopped, I slowly opened the flap and peeked outside. I was back in Mr. Klossner’s yard. I quickly stepped out of the box and looked around. No one was outside. No one had seen me get into or out of the box. I grabbed onto the box and started dragging it to my house. There was no way I was going to leave it there and allow one of the younger neighborhood children to find it. They would definitely get into way more trouble with it than I had.

I somehow managed to sneak it into my house and into the basement. There was a storage room we usually didn’t go into, so I figured the time machine box would be safe there.

I ran upstairs and called Aura to tell her everything that had happened. She couldn’t come over that evening, but she promised to come the next day after school.

When she saw the box, Aura was just as confused about it as I was. Neither of us could come up with a good reason why someone would create a time machine and have it inside a cardboard box or why someone would randomly place it in Mr. Klossner’s yard.

Aura wanted to try it out, so I explained how to use it. I decided to stay behind so I could see what happened to the box on the outside and to see how long it took for Aura to come back. Using the clocks and stopwatches on our cell phones, Aura pushed the red button and we both started our stopwatches at the same time. I saw the outside of the box vibrate for a minute, and then it stopped. Aura opened the flap, shock and amazement filling her face. Checking my clock, basically no time had pass. Aura’s clock, however, showed 5 additional minutes on her stopwatch.

We had an actual time machine, and it was one we could use without messing too much with our present timeline. We were going to have so much fun with this.


End file.
